His Ardor: A Meitantei Holmes Fanfiction, Part 3
by AmberPalette
Summary: In the continuing unnerving case of Jack the Ripper, Holmes and Moriarty enlist the help of Irene Adler, the actress who once bested both geniuses, in order to solve the crime.


His Ardor:

Part 3

A Sherlock Hound/Meitantei Holmes Fanfiction

By Amber C.S. ("ProfessorA")

**Author's note:  ** I STILL OWN NOTHING!!****

**_This work is a hodgepodge of various canonical and alternate universe sources:_****  The Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (most specifically "The Sign of Four," "A Study In Scarlet," "A Scandal In Bohemia," and "The Final Problem"), the Basil Rathbone film "Terror By Night," the Hayao Miyazaki television series "Sherlock Hound," the Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment Sherlock Holmes miniseries, and especially the Steven Spielberg film "Young Sherlock Holmes."**

**All characters aside the historically infamous figure "Jack the Ripper" and my fancharacter "Katherine Farrell" (who is copyrighted to ME) are copyright Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; in the case of Dr. Waxflatter and Elizabeth Hardy and the Rhamme Tep, Steven Spielberg; or, in the case of Polly, Todd and Smiley, Hayao Miyazaki.  **

**~*~**

Holmes had been standing in his beige overcoat in Mrs. Hudson's garden, brooding among the lily bulbs and in the rain, since 5 o'clock that afternoon.  Periodically, as requested, I rose from my armchair and peered out our boarding house window at him to ensure his continued safety . . . and to ascertain whether our heralded and hated guest, Professor Moriarty, had arrived.  While she remained indoors per the criminal's admittedly prudent request, our landlady was allegedly away with her mother in Scotland at the time of Moriarty's visit.

There was no harm, Holmes told me after we left the Blue Raven Tavern, in a little extra caution for the young widow's sake.  

Somewhat vexed as to her quarantine from all guests and errands, Mrs. Hudson had sighed, planted her hands on her hips, and vanished into the kitchen to take out her frustration on our dirty dishes.

At 8 o'clock that evening, when I parted the curtain and peered into the garden, Holmes was gone.  I acted immediately, seizing my revolver from the tea table, stuffing it in my pocket, and flying down the steps.  I glimpsed the kitchen quickly.  Finding the landlady untouched and wholly unaware of the impending danger, I demanded that she remain where she was and, gathering my courage, sprang out the door.

I found my companion thankfully unharmed, but poised in a pounce-ready crouch on the other side of the brick garden fence.  His deerstalker was sodden and drooping from the rain, and his pipe hung burned out between his lips, but he was glaring at the darkness around the corner as if squaring off with Satan himself.  His right hand slid slowly into his pocket, where his own pistol awaited cocked and ready.  The rain abated, and the sky began to clear.  I joined my friend, my every muscle taut.  "Holmes . . . ?"

"_Quiet_—look straight ahead, and be ready for anything," he spat softly, and I obeyed. My heart palpitated beneath my dressing gown.  

Into the cool moonlight spilled four distinct forms. There was no question as to the leader; there was a space of several feet between him and his followers: one that they would not dare breech. 

 Their boss was a lean man, tall and gangly like Holmes—thin, spry and nervous.  He was an indiscernible mixture of Irish wolf and Middle Eastern breed, Pharaoh or Ibizan hound.  Despite his foreign roots, he was dressed in the finest gentleman's attire and three years shy of forty.  His muzzle was long, sharp, elegant. . . yet poised at any moment to snarl. Near his nose grew an impeccably trimmed moustache. His was a dark countenance, with dagger-pointed ears and deep gray eyes that absorbed what I could scarcely doubt to be every miniscule detail of his environment.  The exact thoughts churning in his brain were perpetually shrouded by enigma, but the intensity behind that gaze was unmistakable.  It was an expression I knew only in one other living soul:  Holmes himself.  This man alone was my friend's equal, a man we were loathe to recognize:  James Moriarty.  The most singular aspect of his countenance was also the most unsettling:  As he moved, as he turned and murmured orders to his companions, his head swayed slowly, menacingly, from one side to the other, in a manner almost reptilian.  

The person directly behind the fiendish Professor was roughly 30 years old; sleek reddish-black and roguishly handsome, he moved his short, slender figure about with something between a jaunty swagger and a skulk.  It was Colonel Moran, our messenger from the past evening.  His wardrobe was a peculiar hodgepodge of respectable tweed trousers and overcoat, and a tilted Irish cap and sizzling cigarette.  Most unnervingly, a red-brown stained dagger and pistol glistened in his belt aside his gold pocket watch.  Moran made eye contact with me alone, grinned impishly as though we were still boon companions.  

Following the Colonel was a stout, brown-faced pug, a young man of about 25 years with a generous belly, clad in plain trousers and suspender shirt, and sporting a similar cap on his clean-trimmed scalp.  His tall companion, the fourth, was a younger, lanky Hamilton Foxhound with a long, perplexed face; he too shared Moran's rakish attire.  These boys, scarcely more than the Professor's most trusted lackeys, were Todd O'Toole and Smiley Marrow, working class Irish who, for such young men, were seasoned pirates. The former lad was the epitome of gruffness and common sense, while the latter of a kind of sweet, simple childlike whimsy that I had never seen fitting in one of Moriarty's chief henchmen.  

Perhaps I just felt sorry for the bereaved lad.  

While his associates held back, Moriarty loomed towards us, halting over the cobblestones seamlessly as a levitating phantom; his white cloak billowed, as he stopped, in a manner both graceful and menacing.  Those shrouded gray eyes, a colder, hungrier variant of Hound's, drank us both in, violating our deepest thoughts.  They squinted, flashed satisfied comprehension, and were averted to the façade of 221 B.  

And then he smiled.  "Oh, _come_, now, gentlemen.  You have less frontal development than I should have expected.  It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's dressings."  When we remained mute and unmoving, he sniffed, shrugged, and rapped his walking stick on the sidewalk.  "Lovely evening, what?  And a lovely view from that window up there to boot."  He adjusted his monocle on the bridge of his long sleek nose, an act that, while meant to be just disarming, unnerved me frightfully.

Of course, I was already terrified.  My very core squirmed.  But Holmes only smiled back.  "Indeed.  I trust you are in good health?"

The Professor cocked his head dashingly, not without a touch of conceit.  "Never better, dear boy.   My fear is for the good doctor—seems a bit on the faint side."  Then, stroking the tip of his walking stick, he glanced my way and sneered, and my head indeed swam. 

"Care for some brandy, Dr. Watson?" Smiley came trumping up behind his employer waving a little amberglass bottle.  I might have obliged the unexpected kindness had Moriarty not, that moment, turned crossly upon his youngest employee and snapped at the "idiot" to "shut up."  

Holmes, and Sebastian Moran, to my shock, chuckled.  

I was provoked, by the boy's kindness and by his employer's lack of civility, to offer my condolences.  My composure somewhat regained, I offered, "Thank you, Mr. Marrow, just the same.  May I say that, despite our past discord, I am truly sorry for . . . for your mother."

The gangling lad fixed a look of complete shock upon me, one that melted into barely contained grief.  He wrung his hands, swallowed and stared ruefully past me, his large brown eyes grown watery.  " . . . Thank you, sir," he whispered.

Silence followed; I flashed a glimpse at Moriarty's face, and saw it, fleetingly, disconcerted.  His dark eyes wandered and then met mine, and, caught in his remorse, he hastily retreated behind his enigmatic sangfroid.  He challenged me with a resentful glare, and I averted my eyes in a plea to Holmes. 

The detective spoke more declaratively at last.  "Come in, Professor.  You may bring one of your three . . . friends . . .  but only one."

"No need," Moriarty retorted.  "Boys, keep a sharp watch, if you would."  As if his requests were anything but mandatory to his three obedient followers.  They were prudent fellows.  

"Now," Holmes tossed languidly at his leering, white-clad guest, while Moriarty easily closed the gap between them with his lanky legs, "to the matter. Perhaps it has occurred to you that . . ."

"Oh, absolutely.  She would be of remarkable help."

"Then you, like myself, have spotted her recently near the. . ."

"Precisely.  Dressed fully in . . . "

"Yes.  So you know that I have . . ."

"I do.  And you must find it at once."

"Capital notion, Professor."

"Thank you, I thought so.  So you'll . . . "

"This very moment."

"Jolly good."

I blinked, scrambling up behind them.  Apparently a conversation had taken place in the space between the alley where the thugs waited and our boarding house door: a conversation which occurred in silence but was perfectly coherent to the two tall, thin geniuses who strode into the foyer.  I sighed and latched the door closed.  "Holmes, really, if one of you could please enlighten me. . ."

My friend crowed a short laugh.  "Oh, yes, forgive me, Watson."  Warily he ushered the Professor to the coat rack by the stairwell and then joined me with a reassuring clap on the back.  While he explained, Moriarty groaned and fixed upon me a look of impatient contempt.  "Professor Moriarty has reached a similar conclusion as myself, believing that our peculiar acquaintance, the lovely and cunning Irene Adler Norton, recently widowed and returned from the United States, would make a dynamic force helping us acquire new information about Jack the Ripper.  She is skilled in all manner of disguise and treachery, which, when put to good use, solves many a baffling crime."

"Aha!"  I pounded my fist into my open palm. I always derived pleasure from successfully tracing the threads of my friend's cognitions to their end.  "Marvelous, Holmes!  Rather shocking, I'll admit, but quite thrilling!"  Then I hesitated.  "Oh, but . . . tell me, for curiosity's sake . . ."

Here came another groan from Moriarty, obviously a man not blessed with, among others, the virtue of longsuffering.

At last the question formed in my mind.  " . . . Well, deuce, I mean, how did you two discover Mrs. Norton's widowhood—even the fact that she has returned to England?"

"Simple, Doctor," our guest spoke this time, in that richly textured hiss he called a voice.  While we began to climb the steps leading to Holmes's sprawling study, he declared, "Mrs. Norton has been gone for less than a year.  She still had her mail forwarded to her address in America, and by a small set of snooperies and observational trespassings, even an amateur could seek out the air posts' dispatch box containing her letters."  He gestured pompously into the air with his walking stick, tracing his thoughts for me as though I were a particularly thick-headed pupil—even pausing for dramatic effect, pointing the stick right at my nose, eyes snapping on my face, making sure I was still following him.  I was forced to nod at him, and vigorously, at that, before he would even consider continuing.  

Todd and Smiley must have endured this babbling flim-flammery on a daily basis; at once, realizing this, I felt deep compassion for the two seedy lads.  Holmes, in front of us, stole a glance at my taut expression and stifled another chuckle into his shirtsleeve.  It made me wonder if he could read my thoughts.  

But Moriarty tossed his hat and gloves over the railing onto an oak end table, sniffed haughtily at the both of us, and continued full throttle:  "I have . . . met . . . the lady in question before. I found cause to keep an eye on her shenanigans, much as Mr. Holmes has done.  I was informed that, three months ago, her married name was dropped from the title enclosed in the packages and letters sent to her.  As most packages sent to her were large in nature, they must be gifts—perhaps gifts of compassion.   There are, as Mr. Holmes has doubtless noticed, aspects about the types of pen ink used by old church friends in writing tender correspondences such as letters of condolence—ink and paper carried only by merchants who sell to clergyman in the vicinity of Mrs. Norton's old church, or with the minister or priest's letterhead."  He smirked, fingering his moustache.  "But if you want the _plain _answer—and I'm sure that _you_ do—I saw her last week, dressed all in black, at her favorite bookstore, with a cabbie and maidservant of permanent employ attending her. So you see, Dr. Wat . . .son . . . "

The moment his words puttered off, we knew something was amiss; Moriarty never took for granted a chance to palaver about his own genius.  

Together Hound and I turned and saw our menacing guest frozen halfway up the steps, eyes locked downward on something.

Or someone.

The great criminal's every muscle was taut with electricity, and yet his face drained all traces of its malice.  Replacing it was incredulity—more than that, delight—serendipity.  No—more than even that . . . but I could not quite process just what:  On his face, what we _really_ saw was, at the time, far too unthinkable to even consider.  

He was staring at our landlady.

And Mrs. Hudson, wearing her robin's egg blue baker's gloves, cheeks covered in corn starch as she stopped midway towards the kitchen and an aromatic oven full of biscuits . . . was staring right back at him.  "Oh . . . my goodness," she breathed, in a tiny, faint voice.  Her eyes were great aquamarine saucers.  But the look on her face was not that of alarm or fright.  "So _you're_ Mr. Holmes's guest . . ."

"Professor?"  Holmes queried, in a strange, chastising voice from deep in the bowels of his throat.  "Is something the matter?  We really must make haste." His own limbs had grown quite rigid the moment he linked Moriarty's immobile, trance-like stupor to the vulnerable young creature that had induced it.  "Professor!"

Moriarty seemed deaf to the prompt.  And then it happened—a smile, a gentle, soft, conspiratorial grin, slid up his lips.  He was still staring at Mrs. Hudson.  "Well, well," he murmured.  Holmes and I watched him inadvertently lean over the staircase, still smiling, still hypnotized, and then for some reason, when she advanced towards him, his cheeks acquired a flaming red flush. Time seemed to stop then, for all of us, in that dim, gaslit corridor.  

"Oh, God," Holmes mumbled, in a tone of utter exasperation and disgust, and that was the moment that I sensed _something_ was wrong.

With the knowing glee of a pianist compelled to play a phonograph tune heard in a neighbor's window, our landlady reciprocated Moriarty's smile.  She spoke again—so softly that it was obviously intended for no ears but his.  " . . . Hello."

"_Hello_," he breathed back, as if the simple greeting were the final incantation of an ancient magical spell.  

"We meet again, Professor.  I thought we would."  

"I don't regret being wrong about it."  The grin grew unabashed, but Moriarty's cheeks remained red, and he fumbled with his gloves, as if every inch of his usual composure had been drained from his body at the sight of her and only a bashful schoolboy remained. "But, you know, the last time we 'met again,' you shot me out of the sky with Dr. Watson's pistol.  I _do _hope we won't resort to such extremities this evening."

She laughed heartily, clapping her hands.  The silence bowed to her mirth; the whole foyer rang with her giggles.   "Don't expect me to apologize for _that_, sir!  I am _quite_ fond of the Air Post and of the pilot Tommy Nesbitt!" 

"Alright, then, if you insist, madam."  Here Moriarty laughed too, candidly and from his gut, in a manner that suited the boyish bashfulness by which he was suddenly possessed.  "If _you _insist."

I was increasingly more appalled, as the realization that struck Holmes long moments ago came to me.  _Oh, but impossible!_

_Wasn't _it?

Moriarty, having forgotten our existence entirely, continued to gush, "This is a . . . most unexpected pleasure!  They . . . your tenants here told me the boarding house was empty . . . I assumed you were still in Scotland with your mother." 

Mrs. Hudson's smile grew sly.  "Would you have been disappointed, then, if I _were_?"

"You'll _pardon _my interruption . . . " Holmes snarled abruptly from the top stair, pivoting to stalk the upstairs hall.  

"Oh, _will _we?" Moriarty snapped over his shoulder, standing back upright, his strange trance shattered and the lizard-like head-swaying having returned.  

" . . . But," my friend continued dismissively, voice fainter from the distance of his laboratory, "I need your help, Professor, and of course yours, Watson, to begin unraveling the clues at hand."  

"Right with you, Holmes," I crowed, dashing up the stairs. 

At the top step I turned to encourage Moriarty onward, but my breath caught in my throat at the sight I beheld:  Mrs. Hudson had ascended the same step on which he stood, and he was bending down to kiss her hand.  "The delight of your company, it seems," the professor purred, "must be withheld until a later time.  Forgive me, madam."  

"There is nothing to forgive," she replied, eyes sparkling.  "You are welcome in my home.  Just . . . _behave _yourself, good sir!  No gutting, impaling or otherwise injuring my tenants, you hear?"

He smirked in a way that obviously indicated jest.  "If you give me one of those biscuits that I can smell in your oven, I just might be able to oblige."  

She giggled, nodded accord, and departed for the kitchen. 

As the professor joined me in our upward climb, I resolved inwardly not to share that alarming transaction with my flat mate.  

I knew, after all, that Holmes would find some means of deducing it for himself anyway. 

We entered the laboratory/study only to find that Holmes had already graduated to his bedroom.  "I'm looking for that letter she sent me—it bears her old address," he shouted from the chamber.  

"Right," Moriarty tossed back.  "A man of your word, I see—and a man of action.  We'll wait."  He stalked around the room, in slow circles, making me nervous and nauseous. I sat back down in my armchair and watched him.

"A little patience, gentlemen, and I should soon have it," Holmes concluded.  The noise of ruffling papers followed, as well as the flicker of a candle's light for his search.

Silence then ensued, in which I was left to my own devices, alone in the laboratory with London's most formidable criminal.

"So, Professor," I attempted, gingerly, to weave some modicum of conversation.  

"So, Doctor."  An indiscernible lilt played at Moriarty's tone, somewhere between irritation and amusement.

Apparently he found me vaguely entertaining.  This buoyed my confidence. "What is Egypt . . . really like?"

His keen eyes snapped up from among Holmes's test tubes to regard me.  "Hot," he supplied, with a thin smile that warned me against further speech.  "And sandy." The ends of his moustache quivered sadistically.

I started, mortified, feeling as though struck by a snake, and swallowed hard.  Beneath my fur, my skin crawled, and I obeyed his unspoken command.  I managed to nod back at him, and offer a feigned grunt of interest.  He knew I was terrified.

Five minutes of silence passed, interrupted only by the clinking of the professor's fingers against glass bottles, books, and documents that Holmes had, over the course of his innumerable cases, collected.  Moriarty's tongue traced his lips with lurid fascination.  He stooped over Holmes's lowest bookshelf and pieced through the works of his arch enemy's mind.  "_Very nice_," I thought I heard him murmur, once or twice, stabbing a finger at some note or mathematical calculation in one of Holmes's dusty casebooks.  The way his long-legged frame squatted over Holmes's private studies, fingers wildly scratching at one page or the other, he looked like a cross between a vulture and a praying mantis.  

Finally, to my supreme relief—for I was beginning to fear I would have to force the Professor to stop snooping (an act no doubt immediately hazardous to my health)—Holmes returned with the tiny slip of paper Irene Adler had left him over a year earlier.  "You approve of my latest trigonometric theorem?" he tossed at Moriarty, without stopping him from his scout of the bookshelf.  

The criminal straightened, gazed at his foe and again smiled—this time with such a seasoned hypocrite's charm that my heart pulsed.  I jolted.  Moriarty, however, without questioning the route of Holmes's deduction, retorted, "A bit shaky on your geometry, but your knowledge of calculus and trigonometry do indeed bear much admiration."

"But that is not why you have come here."

"Quite right.  The paper?"

"You truly stand fast that Irene Adler could help us to solve this . . . matter?"

"I do."  A sneer slithered up Moriarty's lips, haughtily, as if he found great joy in offering Holmes the advice of the expert.  He leaned his lanky frame against the fireplace, one arm slung on the mantle, cornering Holmes from the door.  "How soon can you contact her?"

"That depends, Professor, on the stamina of tonight's Baker Street Irregulars."  With this, Holmes dipped under Moriarty and clambered down the hallway, waving the paper quite wildly and shouting out the open door for "Polly" and "Wiggins."  The vexed Professor and I dogged his heels closely.  

"Bloody street Arabs," I grumbled after the gyrating, charismatic Holmes, who had taken to shouting down his unofficial detective force from the steps of our flat.  He contracted considerable stares, particularly those of Todd, Smiley and Sebastian Moran, still devoted to their post outside Mrs. Hudson's garden.  Soon, however, two plucky children, one a boy of fifteen and the other a fair ten year-old girl, appeared at the doorstep with attentive faces.  Behind them gathered a grungier mob of youths, not one of them over the age of twelve.  Despite myself I pitied their poverty-stricken state.  "Beggars."

"I _know_," Moriarty snapped over his shoulder at me, as we too reached the foyer.  "I met the girl in her pick-pocketing prime, if you'll recall.  _Precious_ Polly."

"Ah, yes."  I suppressed a hearty snort of laughter.  "Polly and the Blue Carbuncle."  

At the moment the very girl was consorting with Holmes; he handed her the paper, and she motioned the ringleader, Wiggins, to join their little parlay.  Both children's eyes threatened to bug from their skulls with their excitement as they verified the coordinates of Irene Adler's old boarding house with the detective.  Holmes smiled at the children and ruffled their hair as Moriarty's three accomplices warily joined us on the steps.  

"Professor . . . ?" Todd began, indicating the readiness of his pistols in his utility belt.  

Moriarty shook his head once, sharply, and sliced a "no" through the air with his fist.  "It's safe, boys," he mumbled, monocle gleaming in the pale moonlight.  Immediately his employees submitted, their shoulders slumping at ease.  

Sebastian Moran was less abashed with his protective duties, slipping between his boss and Holmes.  He scowled softly at the children and detective and spoke between his teeth.  "Aw, bloody hell, James, what the _devil _is that eccentric pup going to--?"

"_Quiet_," the Professor snapped, leaping surprisingly quickly to his nemesis's defense.  His face was stormy.  "The lad _knows _what he's doing.  Don't question him, Sebastian."

My former army mate shrugged, with a dismissive snort, and glowered at the cobblestones.  

"Hey," the girl child's high, piercing voice stabbed the silence.  She pointed a finger at Moriarty, a look of staggering hatred on her little cherub face.  "You're _him_. I remember _you_.  What are you doing here?  You'd better not hurt Mr. Holmes or Dr. Watson!"  The crowd of children jeered their agreement, shaking their tiny fists. 

Moran moved closer to Moriarty, shielding him, that strange growling sound rumbling in his throat.  

"Oh, dear," I mumbled.  

The Professor's eyes narrowed.  He did not stir, but his grasp on his walking stick tightened.  "I don't plan to harm anyone at the _moment_, Miss Polly."

 "Not Mrs. Hudson, either. . . " 

"_No chance of that_,_ kid_!" he snarled, swiping the cane at Polly, and the typically fearless girl stumbled back behind Holmes with a yelp.  The Baker Street Irregulars scattered, behind barrels, crates and horse carts, in the street.  Even Todd and Smiley jumped, and fixed curious glances on their boss.  They didn't understand.  But Sebastian's expression went smug, and he looked at me and indicated a brazen "I told you so" with a sigh.  And my suspicions from a half hour earlier—when the professor and our landlady met all but _tenderly_ in our stairwell—were fed like freshly blazing wildfire.

 _Don't you know, _Moran had sneered last night, _about them?_

Them.

Oh, Good Lord.  No.

"Yes, well, no more of that—time to conduct your business," Holmes stepped in, fixing a warning glare on the Professor, and Moriarty, rolling his eyes, turned his back on the group. " And a half-crown to the first child that can deliver my request for an audience to the famed Ms. Irene Adler!"  He grinned to feed their bravado. 

"Righto, gov," the boy, Wiggins, chirped.  "We'll have her to your door in an hour!"  Soon the ragtag mob dashed to the alleys, whispering and giggling into the night with the glee of their new mission.

Holmes turned to Moriarty and myself, sidestepping the professor's three thugs as if they were ants on the pavement.  "They had better not . . ."

Moriarty anticipated him again, as usual.  "Boys, heed me," he addressed his thugs, "not a hair on the children's heads.  Don't touch them, and make sure they aren't harmed by anyone _else_.  Got it?"  

"Yes, sir," his employees noted their accord in unison.  

Holmes sniffed.  "Very good.  Now, shall we retire to the sitting room and ponder in the duration, gentlemen?"

"Tea and biscuits!" came Mrs. Hudson's cooing voice from the kitchen.  

Todd and Smiley's faces were transfixed by rapture.  "It's _her_," the taller lad whispered.  Were his mouth to hang any farther ajar, he, and his stout companion, might drool there on our front step.  

"Yes, yes!  No time like the _present_!" Moriarty, grinning and yet again a different creature, was inside in a flash, ignoring his thugs' continued misery outside in the hungry cold.  For he was very preoccupied.  

My stomach turned.  "Suddenly I'm not particularly hungry."

Holmes closed the door in the three accomplices' faces.  But we could still hear Sebastian's nasty, ironic chuckling.  

"Perhaps a little intellectual discussion might resuscitate your appetite," my friend spoke, in a markedly loud voice, to muffle the creepy sound. 

"Indeed!" I exclaimed, jumping between Moriarty and the landlady, who was offering him the biscuit tray.  I feigned a saccharine smile at our criminal guest, who scowled venomously back. "Yes, _I'll_ take that, Professor, no need to bother _you_ with it.  Now, you two seem to imply that you've met the lovely Irene before.  Share with me:  I need to be enlightened once again."

            "Need that a _lot_, don't you?" Moriarty needled, sidling around me and stalking dejectedly up the steps.

            "Most assuredly," Holmes mumbled, softening it with a laugh.  

            "I beg your pardon?" I bristled.  I was still somewhat injured.

            Mrs. Hudson laughed and returned to the kitchen.  It was then, as we ascended to the parlor, that my friend began explaining his complex past with the deadly beauty Irene Adler.  Moriarty stood at the top step, peering at us over the railing and listening intently.

            "I first met Ms. Adler," Holmes spoke, "six years ago, upon attendance of my favorite opera . . ."

            "_La Magdalena," _ Moriarty breathed.  Had it not been so quiet in the hall, we might not have even heard him.

            Holmes stopped midstride.  "How did you know that, Professor?"

            Our guest balked.  "I . . . was there too, Mr. Holmes," he admitted, in a manner almost embarrassed.  "It is my favorite piece, as well." 

            "I . . . see."  Holmes brooded at the criminal momentarily, then continued.  "You see, Watson, there, in the role of the tortured heroine, was Irene herself.  I must admit, she had the most profound effect on me. I am not a man moved to tears, Watson, but listening to the power of our grand opera star's performance, I simply sat there in my solitary seat and. . . well, Watson, it was not my finest hour . . . "

            "Aye, indeed, nor mine." Moriarty nodded, slowly.  His fingers drummed on the edge of the railing.  His eyes were almost as distant, as entranced with memory, as those of Holmes, as I watched my companion continue upward, in a pace that almost seemed weighted with something heavy.  

"Well, at any rate, it appeared that a Bavarian Duchess, wealthy, possessing many jewels and among them a priceless diamond necklace, had taken Irene . . . Ms. Adler . . . under her wing as her social protégé.  This woman, or so it seemed, motioned that Irene . . .ah, _Ms. Adler_ . . . and I . . . meet after her performance, as her thanks for my solving a particularly baffling case for her nephew.  We met, oh indeed, we _met_."  A strange flame came into my friend's eyes then, one I had not seen since Elizabeth had been alive.  "We met for hours in her private quarters at the theater, talked, and laughed and . . . and then . . . well, Watson, it was . . ._she_ was . . . _quite_ . . ." he suppressed an involuntary shudder.  

"Delicious," Moriarty finished, with a peculiar little giggle.  "Radiant.  _Lovely_."  He was still staring in awe at a point far above and past our boarding house walls.  Tracing his lips with his tongue.  But it wasn't the same way he had looked at Mrs. Hudson.  It was cruder somehow—less clean, less genuine and gentle.  

            But Holmes' look of remembrance was quite comparable to the way that Moriarty had first looked upon our landlady.  Now he glowered at our guest, incensed.  "Yes, that's _one _way to phrase it.  The crux of it all is, when she had to return to her home and sleep, Irene . . ."

            "_Ms. Adler_," Moriarty corrected him, not without a painful amount of sarcastic glee.  

            "_Ms. Adler _persuaded me to come see her encore performance the next evening. I had been bidden to watch her purse and other belongings in the audience, as her personal attendant was ill, while seated next to the Duchess herself.  Then came the real disaster, Watson.  During the final scene, there came a raucous noise from the theater box, a scream—that very Duchess of my clientele and Ms. Adler's acquaintance had lost the famed diamond necklace.  At first, gentlemen, I _loitered_, _foolishly _thinking it to have fallen into the crowd—but it indeed had vanished.  The police came, searched the entire building and investigated every suspect, but came up empty handed.  They spent a particular time searching a tall man, roughly my height and weight, who had been seen near the stage for a protracted time, but still no sign of the necklace."  

We reached the laboratory again, and entered to the smell of mothballs and ammonia.  Holmes concluded, "Ms. Adler paid her good wishes to the shocked Duchess, told me she was fatigued, and bid me escort he to her carriage.  Ah, an actress indeed!  For what none of us, myself included, knew, was that Ms. Adler had used an accomplice, a member of the crowd, a sophisticated thief who could pickpocket a bobby within a blink of an eye and still blend into any audience indiscernibly.  The thief, dressed perhaps as a servant, had slipped the diamonds from the Duchess's neck into Ms. Adler's bag.  And I, as I escorted he to her carriage and to our long-tem departure, became the unwitting accomplice who carried the bag and its diamond to her very hands.  She split the rewards of the necklace, which she sold, with her accomplice—most likely the tall man that was found empty handed at the stage.  A month later, this same accomplice sent anonymous—and thus invalidated, yet damaging—accusations of her culpability to Scotland Yard.  She was never looked upon in respectable British Society the same way again.  It was part of the reason why the King of Bohemia would not dare have her in marriage, bur rather took her as a mistress and married another."

"But what could have provoked this newly wealthy accomplice," I exclaimed, "who shared so much of the fortune, to betray her?"

"_Retribution_, Watson," Holmes smirked.  "For our clever lady of the stage gave her accomplice nothing—nothing but _counterfeit currency_."

            Here came a strangled sound in Moriarty's throat.  "I remember it well.  They even _smelled _real, _tasted_ real . . . The _bitch_. . ." he mumbled, grinding his jaw.  His face began to oscillate in that calm, reptilian manner that truly signaled his rage.  

            Holmes stopped halfway to his easy chair, gawking at Moriarty in sudden comprehension.  "My God, you don't mean _you_ were . . ."

            "The tall, thin accomplice by the stage, yes.  Rest _assured_, Ms. Adler and I _'met,'_ as you so _discretely_ put it, for a _great _deal of time, too, that night, before she gave me those false bits of metal and a promise of my new riches, and vanished off into the night."  He bared his fangs at the thought.  "You see, that is why I am _certain_ she can help us, Holmes.  In truth, she's bested us _both."_  

            Holmes fixed a steel glare on him.  "And yet you warned her against me six years later the next time she was up to no good . . ." 

            "I knew the loss of he to another man and another country would be a great toll on _your_ spirit.  Always employ a lesser enemy to destroy a greater one," Moriarty sneered.  "Isn't that what we're doing with this Jack the Ripper fellow, my dear Holmes?"

            Before my friend or I could begin to accost him with equally scathing replies, the door bell rang.  

            Two female voices chattered in the landing, and at last, as the three of us sat in chairs facing the door, presented by a wary Mrs. Hudson, we were graced with the presence of _The Woman.  _

She who entered was beautiful beyond measure.  Her face was fair and smooth as fine porcelain, eyes enchanting and unsettling, glistening like ice suspended in amber whiskey.  And her voice, when she spoke, was like rich wet silk.  

_Meant only for the detective_.  "Mr. Holmes, we meet again.  I cannot deny that I have long looked forward to this day."  She nodded at Holmes, so simple an act, and yet it gave the impression of an enormous favor, the blessing of a crinolin-clad deity.  She cocked her head as she greeted him, ignoring the rest of us altogether, her lush tendrils of brown hair trembling and tossing as she moved.  Mesmerizing.

"Ms. Adler," Holmes replied, apparently unmoved by her splendor.  

Sometimes I honestly do _not_ understand how he manages it. 

"Or should I say Mrs. Norton?" There was more than a touch of spite in his voice.  More than a touch of jealousy. 

"Adler will do, kind sir."  She returned his acid smile; on her gently curved lips, however, it was deceptively coy.  "Best to leave the past where it belongs."  I could sense a deeper sorrow there, lingering behind her nonchalant mask, but much like my dear friend Holmes, she was a master at restraining and disguising her true feelings.  

A strange hissing noise escaped Moriarty as he, like Holmes and myself, lingered tensely in limbo between his chair and standing.  I glanced at him and saw he was smirking.  The sound he made must have been laughter.  "How _convenient_, Madam," he sneered, dripping his cynicism all over us.  "Holmes, do introduce me to your _charming _guest."

"No need," the lady snapped, those whiskey eyes flashing brighter, and Holmes closed his poised mouth.  "I shall present _myself_ to you, my fine _rude_ sir.  I am the Lady Irene Adler.  It comes to my attention that you already were aware of my identity, and that _you _are Professor James Moriarty.  The one and only . . . ah, how do they say it in the country pubs?" She chewed on a gloved fingernail, displaying theatrical mock puzzlement, condescendence, meant to unnerve and fluster him.  He knew it and his face darkened as she continued. "Ah, yes, out in the cow fields of Ireland, they call you the 'Napoleon of Crime,' am I right?  Well, it is an _honor,_ sir." She swept over the professor and curtsied angrily; coming from any less enchanting creature, it would have appeared absurd.  But from her, it was formidable.

Moriarty's eyebrow rose over a blankly staring face, his eyes oscillating from one corner of her visage to the other yet again.  Yes, a sure sign of his impending rage.  He rose up at his full height, several inches her superior, stiff and ramrod.  I watched his fists tighten at his sides, and I began to perspire under my starched shirt collar. Dangerous calm steadied his words. "You have heard of me, then?"

"Indeed." Again her lupine smile.

"And I you, dear lady. We have indeed _met _before, you know.  Quite intimately." He pretended to find the recollection of her difficult, when Holmes and I had seen his clear, livid memory displayed only moments past.  He continued:  "There were false coins all over your bed that night, right?  You were wearing red.  'All for me.'  Ha_.  Dear_ me, and apparently you told Mr. Holmes you wore it for _him_ but one night earlier. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't _you_ the one that . . ."  He licked his lips again, in that queer, thirsty way . . . "giggles in her _sleep_?"

Holmes grunted disgust at the implication, and I nearly gagged.

"Oh, dear," Mrs. Hudson breathed, her cheeks going ruddy.  She suddenly grew quite busy dropping lumps of sugar in our tea.  

"Don't flatter yourself, Professor," Adler hissed, undaunted.  "I was feeling _awfully _lonely that night, for someone _else_," here she glanced at Holmes, who went positively scarlet, "and _you, _sir, were a _great_ deal _younger. _A mistake I'll _never _repeat.  Case closed."

He spewed a demeaning laugh.  "Ah, I see. Well, my dear, your reputation in the lower ranks of English society, and the higher ones in _all_ of Europe," here the Professor glanced the detective's way, "necessitates that I keep my eye on you."  He leered close to her face, a snarl bared on his lips.  "_Every minute_."

She did not flinch.  "If you are trying to frighten or humiliate me," she breathed, "then I assure you that your dangerous nature is already duly noted, sir."

His voice plummeted to a bottomless register, and my skin was again compelled to squirm under my fur.  "Then _you_," Moriarty growled, deep in his throat, "are a _wise_ young woman."

"_I,_ Professor!"  She giggled, laughed outright, lovely as silver coins falling to pavement.  "I am your _equal_, and _his_," and she gestured at the brooding Holmes, crouching next to me,  "in _every _way." 

Mrs. Hudson looked at her straight on now, in a manner that seemed more approving that chastising.  "Bravo," she muttered, inadvertently plopping a second sugar cube in Moriarty's tea.  

And thus began the challenge.

"Would you be willing to _die_ to prove that?"  The maniacal gleam that had made him Scotland Yard's coveted trophy shone bright in Moriarty's stare.  

But Irene Adler pressed a gloved finger against his chest.  Unafraid.  "Would _you?"_  she hissed back.

"That is what we are _all _here for," Holmes snapped, shoving them apart.  "Here to utilize our talents to stop this wicked force that plagues London.  Irene . . ."

"Ms Adler," Moriarty once again snidely corrected him.

"_Irene_," she override icily.  "Please _do _call me Irene."

Holmes could not suppress a smirk as he watched Moriarty putter like a deflating balloon back to his chair.  "Irene . . . A word with you, please, alone."

"Are you going to _'meet_?' " The Professor cackled under his breath, making one last potshot.  

I glared at him and he laughed harder.  

Mrs. Hudson glared at him and he shut up at once, offering her a look both winsome and humbled.  

I became nauseous again.

Holmes _appeared_, at least to ignore all of us.  All of us but The Woman.  "In my study, please."  He escorted the enchanting femme fatale into his private chambers and latched the door.  

And at last, in the hour of explanation and proposition to come, the team of mystery solvers that would get to the bottom of Jack the Ripper's crimes was cemented.  

**YEAH SO CHAPTER THREE AND IT'S FINALLY, UM, STARTED ;) BE PATIENT, PART FOUR COMING SOON!**


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